How to Fight Advertising

Decision making is hard enough given our tendency to avoid and circumvent reason, but making decisions in the face of advertising is that much more difficult. There is a great post at Get Rich Slowly about the insidious effect of marketing on how we think things taste. It’s really an excerpt from Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell, who always writes interesting things. It got me thinking about small simple things that people can do to emphasize their decision making skills and put a little resistance between the marketing machine and our subconscious minds. I developed an exercise that I think could help.

The goal of the exercise is to make us explicitly aware of the factors that affect our decision to buy things. I understand the things that influence my decisions best in terms of metaphors, so if I can identify the stories and images that I use to create my self identity, maybe I can at least recognize when an ad is appealing to those stories, and reduce their effect on my decisions.

List the big ticket items

Start off by listing the big things you’ve decided to buy in the last few years. Here’s mine:

999 Toyota Corolla
• HP Laptop
• Ipod nano / Ipod shuffle
• Custom late 1990′s Italian road bike
• Futon
• Xbox with Xbox Live
• Two new suits from Mens Wearhouse
• Motorola E815 cell phone
• Trip to Canyonlands National Park
• Aikido equipment and dues

Examine the metaphors

Go through each item and write down the words you associate with it. What do you think of a person who owns that item? Try to think in terms of descriptive story-like terms:

1999 Toyota Corolla

To me, Toyota is an extremely well designed and well built brand, but without the expensive frills that are associated with more expensive cars. At the same time, Toyota is on the forefront of the hybrid movement. Corollas are cars for sensible, intelligent people who care about issues, but aren’t extravagant.

HP Laptop

HP is a stylish computer for the professional or serious student. Not the Wal-Mart of computers that is Dell, but not the super trendy mac (though in truth, I probably would have bought a mac if I had the money). I associate HP with business, capability, and the pc alternative to the mac. Again, a sensible and financially responsible choice. I got this, though it isn’t really available anymore: HP Pavilion.

Ipod Nano and Ipod Shuffle

The Apple Ipod Nano is owned by either young hipsters, older people wishing they were young, or young adult mobile professionals on the go but involved in the exciting world of new technology and business startups. The Apple iPod Shuffle is for athletes, especially runners, but also bicyclists and anyone doing conditioning. I also need them to listen to music .

Custom Italian Road Bike

I didn’t buy this, it was given to me by a friend, but I really like it, so I thought I should include it. People who bike to work are, as with my earlier options, young and mobile, but also concerned about the environment and perhaps actively spurn US consumerism.

Futon

Now that I live with my girlfriend, I don’t use this for a bed, but I think of people who sleep on futons as introspective and meditative, with a desire to keep things as simple as possible. As with the Toyota Corolla, people who own futons try to keep frills to a minimum.

Xbox with Xbox Live

I’m pretty sure that the only people still playing Xbox Live (link is to the 360 version, the regular version is very hard to find these days) are little kids and frat boys. I am neither of these things, but I still play Halo occasionally, especially when we have teenaged family visiting. I associate Xbox with the pretty typical video game loving computer dork image, which I guess sort of fits me, even if I don’t like it (but lets admit it, I do).

Two new suits from Men’s Wearhouse

These are awesome suits! I still am not sure if they were worth the money, but they represented a conscious decision to move into a more professional world. My job is pretty casual, but it has it’s share of meetings with clients, and I wanted to be well dressed for those occasions. I’d say the style of the suits once again represents the young business professional, but with a hint of rebellion against the norm.

Motorola E815 cell phone

This phone is a piece of crap. I got it for free in a promotional deal from Amazon.com. At the time I was excited about the bluetooth headset capability, though the things are so ubiquitous now that I don’t want one, which says something about me in and of itself I think.

Trip to Canyonlands National Park

This was a rugged, hard core trip. This is the most recent one, but the trend in trips I’ve taken over the last few years has been ruggedness and things that remind me of the great value of getting away from technology. I associate these sorts of trips with active people who are doing things and going places, and work and play hard.

Aikido Equipment and Dues

Though I currently don’t practice, I still have all of my equipment, and I’ve paid years of dues. Aikido for me was the personal and philosophical side of my life. I tend to think of Aikido students as serious and introspective, respectful people who are dedicated to the pursuit of self-improvement.

Bringing it all together

Bring it all together by going through each item and noting the kinds of words you used. If you want, you can actually count each time you used a word and make a list. These are the things that advertisers are targeting when they make an ad for your demographic. You could probably sell this exercise to a marketer for a fair amount of money. Anyway, here’s my list:

• Sensible
• Intelligent
• Young and Mobile
• Professional
• Serious
• Introspective
• Hard Core
• Geeky
• Conscientious, environmentally and otherwise
• Different
• Quality over quantity

I added ‘quality over quantity’ because I think it sums up the well-made no frills statements that I made. I added ‘different’ because the suits are really rebellious, but aimed to be different than the typical black or blue pinstripe, while still being professional and attractive.

I think that gives marketers a pretty good series of images and stories to use if they want to grab my attention. It also gives me metaphors I can use to examine why I find something attractive.

Often when we make decisions about purchases we aren’t explicitly considering much of anything, but maybe keying in to the metaphors at work on our subconscious can help use to evaluate what we really want.

This exercise can be a little hard, because you may realize, as I did, that you don’t like some parts of the image that you typically associate with. In my case, I like all the parts individually, but together it seems like they add up to a perfect stereotype, which means I’m not really that different at all. It’s a good lesson.

Have fun with it. I’d love to hear what kind of results you come up with using this method, and whether you think there are ways it could be improved.

In Want Versus Should, I discuss some relevant implications of research on consumption based on short-term and long-term decisions.

-zot